


Where Did I Go Wrong?

by BrokenHazelEyes



Series: OT4- Greg/Ed/Sam/Spike [41]
Category: Flashpoint
Genre: Angst, Depression, Funeral, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Major character death - Freeform, Other, Self-Harm, Self-Mutilation, Suicide, Triggers, accidental suicide, read with caution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 08:30:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4780652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrokenHazelEyes/pseuds/BrokenHazelEyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Next to him, Ed was staring blankly ahead and refusing to look at the milky-white casket braced next to the open grave. The bald sniper’s hands were clenched in his lap, shaking, the only sign of his emotions. Tiny dots of red slipped down the older sniper’s palm onto the black dress slacks where Ed’s fingernails were cutting into his flesh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Did I Go Wrong?

**Author's Note:**

> Another installment of "Hazel Attempts To Write An Excessive Amount Of Fics For A Tiny, Non-Active Fandom". Did I scare everyone off? Holy Cheez-Its, it's like everyone dropped off the map. Like, I still get views but no one's answering my please of *DO YOU LIKE THIS STORY? DO YOU WANT MORE OT4??* XD 
> 
> Please Read: There were some misunderstandings around this story, so let me quick explain some things. Spike, in this story, is not suicidal. He is a self-harmer, a cutter--not suicidal. He does, yes, die in this story by his own hand but it was an accidental death caused by cutting too deep by accident. It was not a premeditated suicide, and nor was the cutting an attempt to take his own life. The self-injury, in Spike's case, was a way of coping with feelings he could not otherwise deal with. He wanted to live, so he wasn't cutting to kill himself. So please understand that. Thank you, and I hope that clears everything up for any confused readers. 
> 
> A/N: I do not own Flashpoint nor the characters. I do not make a profit from my writing, but it's still my writing so please don't repost anywhere. Also, the title is from "How to Save A Life" by The Fray. I do not own this song.

Bright and sunny, it wasn’t what Greg had prepared himself for—gloom, dark clouds hanging low and heavy in the sky, and the slick scent of rain. It was spring, all blooming flowers and quickly-growing grass, and a perfect evening at that.

The only marring of nature’s bloom was the seemingly-bottomless pit a few feet away, void of dirt but waiting to be filled it. Waiting to be covered up, left to mend, and be marked only by a pale-gray stone. It was, simply and abstractly, a grave waiting to welcome a lost soul into the chilled embrace of the Earth.

Next to him, Ed was staring blankly ahead and refusing to look at the milky-white casket braced next to the open grave. The bald sniper’s hands were clenched in his lap, shaking, the only sign of his emotions. Tiny dots of red slipped down the older sniper’s palm onto the black dress slacks where Ed’s fingernails were cutting into his flesh.

The tiny cuticle-shaped marks had only grown in numbers after the doctor looked them in the eye and said, softly, carefully: _“I’m sorry, but he did not make it. We’ll arrange a viewing room for you, so you and your team can say goodbye.”_

Overpowering sunlight lit up Sam’s hair, but it was dull and limp. The younger man’s blue eyes were confused…lost, and just as badly so as when he’d grabbed onto Ed’s shoulder and whispered—as they looked at the body under the sheet—“ _…but… but he’d said he’d stopped…He… he promised.”_

_“I don’t think he wanted to keep doing…that.”_ Greg hushed his younger lover, memories of addiction hard-wired into his brain, _“I think he was hurting and it was the only way he knew out.”_

The negotiator looked down at the small brochure as the coffin was lowered into the ground; he focused on the soft lines of Spike’s lips and nose in the countless photos and not the fake-grains of the plastic box his body was in.

_“We could have helped him, we could have…”_

_“He wasn’t going to accept our help, Sam.”_ Ed had sighed, hunched over in the living room as they got the final report from the police and medical professionals—an accidental suicide, death from a nicked artery.

_“Why didn’t he ask for help?”_ Ed had asked quietly, the night before the funeral, as Sam slept between them. The sniper’s piercing blue eyes bore into the negotiator’s gaze with a hunger for answers. There had been no note, no diary entries, nothing to explain why Spike had been driven to cut so deep—something he’d never done before. There was no explanation as to why the bomb tech hadn’t tried to save his own life, but instead had just floated away with twelve new lines crossed over his body.

A new spot, too.

Spike had always cut his legs, never his arms.

_“He didn’t want help, Eddie.”_

_“How do you know that?”_ The man had seethed; he had still been stuck in anger at that point, _“What if we just missed the signs? What if we could have stopped him?”_

Greg had shaken his head, air thin in his lungs.

_“He was hurting himself to cope; he didn’t want to die. It was just the only way he knew how to live, and he wasn’t ready to let go of that.”_

_“He’s gone,”_ Sam had spoken up, voice lucid but shaky, from where he’d been faking sleep, _“Nothing’s going to bring him back—especially not talking about why he… why he did what he did. So just… stop talking about it. Spike killed himself, and nothing’s ever going to change that.”_

They’d all fallen silent, at that.

“Greg.”

The Sergeant looked up, seeing Ed offering a hand and noting the missing coffin—it was already in the grave, awaiting its blanket of dirt to tuck away the box and prized possession it contained.

There was no anger in those blue eyes, only deep lines under them to show exhaustion, but there was emptiness and barren cold. Sam’s were just wounded, muddled, and vacant. The negotiator was sure his own looked just as hollow.

But he squared his shoulders, standing tall, and tried to ignore Spike’s mother sobbing in the row next to them as the coffin slowly disappeared from sight. Ed did the same, braced in position as aptly as any military professional, and Sam pulled on an emotionless mask as his training kicked in and pulled the sadness from his lips.

The once full, always-beaming smile turned into a thin line that gave away nothing and everything at the same time.

 

It just didn’t feel right, Greg pondered as they stood before the gravestone in an empty cemetery, because it was too beautiful for something like this. There shouldn’t be newly-blossomed flowers, pollen clogging the air, and a hot sun beating down on them.

It should have been icy and vast, a sky full of gray and black, with silence—not birds, not children playing on a grassy knoll just beyond the cemetery’s borders.

Nature shouldn’t be rejoicing, not when Spike was cold and six feet under.

 

An hour later, all three men still standing in a half-circle around the new grave, Greg bowed his head and cried—truly cried. For the first time since he’d found Spike passed out in a puddle of red, a kitchen knife—not a razor blade, like usual, because Spike had been set off by something and had grabbed _the fucking closest thing he could find_ —still clasped firmly in his grip.

Sam hesitantly, like he was unsure of his limbs, wrapped himself around Greg and Ed did the same—they stood there, huddled in a weary mass—for what seemed like hours until Sam made the executive decision to herd them towards the car.

“Spike wouldn’t have wanted us to do this,” was all the blonde said.

 

They’d found the letter two months later, shoved into one of Spike’s most beloved books. It was perfectly crisp, unblemished. It wasn’t a suicide note, just some scribbles within the timeframe of two days before Spike’s… passing.

_I told my dad, today,_ it read sloppily, _he just kept shouting. He wouldn’t even speak English, he was only talking in Italian. He said I was a disgrace, and that I should have died at birth. He said it was bad enough having a son like me, with the SRU and stuff… but he refused to have a gay son, too. He said he wasn’t my father. ~~He said the only way he’d be proud of me is if I killed myself.~~ But he didn’t mean it, I know he didn’t. _

Scrawled below that, nearly unreadable, were the lines that Greg knew had set their lover off the deep end—sent him spiraling down.

_he said Ma hates me and doesn’t want to be a part of my life anymore._

 

A single white rose sat in a glass vase on the lip of the headstone, lightly lisping in the autumn breeze.

“We love you, Spike,” Sam said, crouched down before the grave plot with his partners on either side, “thanks for being our little guardian angel.”

“We love you, buddy,” Ed smiled weakly, the light not fully reaching his eyes.

“Love you,” Greg managed to whisper.

 

The grave marker stared back.


End file.
